


Take Your Old Life (And Put a Line Through It)

by waltwhitmans



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: M/M, i heart new york, indulgent liberal fantasy part three, otp: wait that's my word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 15:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21121229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltwhitmans/pseuds/waltwhitmans
Summary: "I'm still trying to figure out how we're supposed to carve out time for ourselves," Chasten said. "You inherited a dumpster fire. I'm fixing the image of the First Family. Our past few date nights, we fell asleep in front of the TV. I don't want to lose sight of you while we're here."New York City, November, 2021. The First Gentleman has a day about town.





	Take Your Old Life (And Put a Line Through It)

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to all the things in this fic that I unironically love: New York City, libraries, bacon, musical theater, and Chasten Buttigieg.

_We can do anything if we put our minds to it_  
_Take your old life, then you put a line through it_  
_-"Eastside," Benny Blanco feat. Halsey and Khalid_

\-- 

The elementary school in the Bronx was the first event of the day. Driving from the hotel in Midtown would have taken too long, so Chasten and the staff rode in a helicopter from the East River and got a car at the landing site. The school was in the neighborhood with the lowest income in all of New York City. Chasten was going to visit a first grade class that wrote letters to the White House. Most of the children chose to write to Buddy and Truman, but the ones addressed to the First Gentleman were so sweet. They wanted to know what was his favorite room in the White House, was there really a movie theater and a bowling alley, did Santa know how to get there? "You have an hour and a half," Caroline, his Deputy Chief of Staff, reminded him, as they got in the car. "We're due at the other school at eleven-thirty."

"And the library at two," said Ali, his body woman. 

"Dinner at six, show starts at eight," Caroline added. "The President will meet us at the restaurant."

"I'm sure we'll have nothing to talk about," Chasten said.

Agents Wakefield and Adebayo had done one last sweep of the school that morning and were waiting by the front door. Walking down the hall to the classroom, passing the posters advertising the bake sale and the school play, and the kids' drawings and dioramas, Chasten missed teaching. He supposed that leaving one classroom to be the First Gentleman meant that he had the opportunity to be a teacher for all of America. 

The teacher, Mrs. Zuniga, met them outside the classroom. "The kids are so excited to meet you," she said, shaking his hand. "They've been talking about you coming for weeks."

"I just loved their letters," Chasten said. 

Mrs. Zuniga stepped back into the classroom to introduce him. Chasten heard her through the door. "When the First Gentleman comes in, we're all to use our big, friendly voices and say 'Good morning, Mr. Buttigieg,' okay?"

The kids clamored with excitement. Agent Adebayo opened the door, Chasten walked in, and was met by twenty six-year-olds hollering _"Good morning, Mr. Buttigieg!"_

It was a great visit. Chasten decided to take a page from Pete's book and sit on the floor with the kids, in a circle on the rug, to answer their questions and tell them about life in the White House. His favorite room was the Diplomatic Reception Room, because of the beautiful mural on the walls, but he loved the entire second floor because that was where he lived with the President and their dogs. There really was a movie theater, where they liked to watch movies with their friends and family, and a bowling alley, where the President routinely came in second to the First Gentleman. Santa absolutely knew how to get there, and would in fact be making a visit to the White House when it got closer to Christmas. (One of the carpenters volunteered as a Santa at a homeless shelter in DC.) He told them stories about the dogs, and how he was honored to live in a beautiful home and to share it with people, and how happy he was to be with them that morning. He read _The Paper Bag Princess_ to them, and when one little girl climbed into his lap, he gave her a hug and managed not to cry. Ali and Caroline filmed and took pictures to send to the social media team back in the East Wing. 

"What's your favorite part of being First Gentleman?" one boy asked.

"My favorite part of being the First Gentleman is getting to meet so many new people and learning from them," Chasten said. 

After a picture with the class and their teacher, Chasten thanked them all for welcoming him but he had to go. He could hear the kids yelling goodbye as he walked back down the hall with his staff and the agents. Back to the helicopter to go back to Manhattan for the next stop on his goodwill tour. Still, his day was much easier than Pete's. He wasn't addressing the United Nations that afternoon. 

He stressed the good things about his position to people, especially children - and there were so many good things about being First Gentleman. But he'd been doing it for ten months and still felt like he wasn't quite settled in yet. Of course there was going to be a period of adjustment, especially when adjusting to something massive like becoming the First Gentleman of the United States and moving into the White House. He knew it was the undertaking of a lifetime, and he knew that compared to Pete, he had it incredibly easy. There was still so much he hadn't thought about. His first morning in the Residence, still getting used to his new surroundings, one of the housekeepers - a woman old enough to be his mother - commented, apropos of nothing, that in her experience, many of the First Ladies preferred to sleep in a separate bedroom. Chasten had spent the night - well, two in the morning to when they woke up - in the same bed with Pete. Why wouldn't he keep doing it? "I've spent five years sleeping in the same bed with my husband," he said, "why stop now?"

Later, he realized that she probably didn't mean anything by it. Presidents kept such ridiculous hours; Pete worked sixteen hours a day for the first six months. They were on different schedules. And the last president and his wife very obviously did not love each other. Chasten was different, he wanted to be different, he wanted to maintain as much of the normalcy of their marriage as possible. They held on to date night and spoke on the phone when they were apart and slept in the same bed. That night in New York, they were going to have dinner and see a show. That was plenty normal. 

The helicopter had to change course due to cloudy conditions, so they got back to Manhattan late. The motorcade sped back to Midtown as fast as it could, working through the traffic. The next stop was a Montessori school on Madison Avenue near Hunter College. Chasten looked out the window as they passed the college. He'd spoken there years earlier, months before Pete won Iowa. He'd be spending another hour and a half with a fifth grade class who wrote letters, some of which were more hard-hitting than the ones from the first graders: when are we getting Medicare for All Who Want It, what are you doing about climate change, why isn't Trump in prison yet. He would answer to the best of his ability. 

At the school, he was met with the same amount of enthusiastic students. He sat in a chair, looked every kid in the eye as he answered their questions. Chasten never spoke for Pete, especially when it came to policy, but he'd spent enough time stumping for the campaign that he could speak with a fair amount of authority. It broke his heart to hear these kids, ten and eleven years old, wanting to know what the President was going to do for them. "You shouldn't have to worry about these things," Chasten said. "You shouldn't be thinking so far into the future. The President is working with Congress to make sure that you will have healthcare, and we will address climate change, so you and every kid in America can focus on just living your lives." 

"What about Trump?" one kid asked.

"That's not up to me," Chasten said. He knew how to deal with smartass kids. "That's for Attorney General Harris and the Department of Justice to decide."

Towards the end Chasten took some lighthearted questions. 

"What's living in the White House really like?"

"Like living in a combination of a fancy hotel and a museum. There's fresh flowers every day, and the food is amazing, and there are chambermaids to make the beds and dust and everything. But we have to pay for our groceries and dry cleaning and everything, and I'm still kind of afraid to touch the old stuff. I don't want to break Mamie Eisenhower's favorite chair, you know? The staff is amazing. They've all forgotten more about the White House than I'll ever know." 

"What's your Secret Service nickname?"

"Scholar. The President is Steward, and his mother is Scribe." He didn't mention that originally Anne was supposed to be "Sundance," but when Agent Bradford proposed it she raised one eyebrow and asked, "Does that make you Butch?" 

"Do the dogs have nicknames?"

"No. They're the First Dogs." Agent Prescott had a bevy of nicknames for them: Frick and Frack, Heckle and Jeckle, Wingus and Dingus, Knuckle and Head. Buddy had peed on her shoe once and she hadn't forgotten. 

"Have you ever seen any ghosts?"

"Never. But the Marine who guards the outside door at the Oval Office swears he saw Lincoln in the Entrance Hall."

After pictures with the class, Chasten was on his way again, to his next stop. The children's room at the 96th Street Library had just been reopened after an extensive renovation partially funded by a federal grant; Pete, being a great lover and supporter of public libraries, had suggested it. Chasten was going for Afternoon Storytime. In the brand new children's room - walls painted with scenes from _Alice in Wonderland_, _Peter Rabbit_, and _Madeline_, shelves at exactly the right height for a child to pull a book from, and bay windows to sit in to read - Chasten once again took a spot on the floor with the toddlers and preschoolers, and listened to the librarian read _Grace for President_. Only in New York would you find a children's librarian with a septum piercing and a full sleeve of tattoos. Chasten read _Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus_. The kids were thrilled to have two stories in one day, and paid no attention to their parents taking dozens of pictures. Sometimes it was nice to be in a crowd who didn't know who he was. 

"We haven't had a crowd this big since we did Drag Queen Storytime back in June," the librarian said. 

"Too bad I left my heels at home," Chasten said. 

He decided to do two things with the platform he'd been given: open the White House to the people, and meet everyone else where they were. At the White House, Chasten did away with the veils of secrecy and suspicion. He opened the Easter Egg Roll to hundreds of kids from low-income neighborhoods; invited performing arts schools to put on plays in the East Room; walked the dogs around the eighteen acres that surrounded the White House and talked to the joggers and sightseers he met; dressed up as a scarecrow and gave out candy at the White House Halloween Party. When he traveled, he went to the places no presidential spouse had ever gone before. He visited a VFW hall in Bakersfield, California, and was saluted by a young man who had just been fitted with a prosthetic arm. He went to Charleston, West Virginia, and sat down with miners being trained for new jobs. He went to a hospital in rural Kansas, only open by the grace of God and one of the first bills Pete signed into law, diverting federal funds to keep hospitals from closing in needed areas. He sang hymns in a Sunday school class in Montana, toured ruined homes in Puerto Rico, and made a sweetgrass basket on St. Simons Island. (Pete kept the little basket on his desk. He put trail mix in it.) There was no shortage of places in America that had been overlooked or forgotten. He wanted to reach a hand out and tell them that they hadn't been left behind.

There was enough time between leaving the library and going to the restaurant that Chasten decided to relax at the hotel for a couple of hours. When he was alone in the suite, he turned on the television to catch the last few minutes of Pete's speech. CBS was broadcasting live. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read _President Buttigieg Addresses UN General Assembly_. Chasten still got a little thrill out of seeing his husband referred to as the President. "I pledge to you and to the world that America will always stand guard against tyranny and violence. I say to you that Americans are committed to living our values, and we will defend those values at home and abroad, for every citizen and for every ally. We will not shirk from our duty and we will not abdicate our responsibilities. The world needs America, now more than ever, but only if America can be at her best. If all nations stand together, then we can build the future that all people so richly deserve. Thank you very much."

Applause. The audio from the General Assembly cut out and was replaced by John Dickerson and Margaret Brennan discussing the speech. Chasten thought about texting Pete to tell him he did a great job but he probably didn't have his phone on him anyway. Pete had a larger retinue of staff with him on this trip: his body woman, Saralena; Chris, his Press Secretary; José, his Deputy Chief of Staff; two speechwriters, Amy and Marc; and four Secret Service agents with eyes on him at all times. Saralena usually had his phone during the day. The government issued phones were secured by the NSA and only to be used for texting and calling a handful of numbers: close friends, family, and each other. Any other communication went through Saralena. You just couldn't be too careful. 

It took fifteen minutes to drive one mile from the hotel to the restaurant on 9th Avenue. Caroline and Ali were staying at the hotel; Pete's retinue would be joining them. They were going to work through dinner for the week ahead: there was a vote coming up on Pete's infrastructure bill, they had to get ready for HGTV to film the White House Christmas Special and get the last few details covered for the tree lighting, and everyone was already talking about the state dinner for Monaco in April. Chasten looked out the window and saw the famous LOVE sculpture on the corner. No time to jump out and get a picture. 

Chasten had always thought of himself as an independent person. He left home at a young age, put himself through school, lived through homelessness, survived abusive relationships, spent years on the knife's edge of backbreaking poverty, and came through it with his sense of humor and ability to love intact. It was enough of an adjustment when he moved in with Pete and suddenly there was someone there who would vacuum and take out the trash. Moving into the White House and having a full staff to do seemingly everything except bathe them was on a completely different level. The first few weeks, Chasten would try to do something but find a maid or butler doing it for him. The staff of the White House were all very proud of the work they did, and Chasten wouldn't dare take it from them, but he chafed a little at these new constraints. After a month, Chasten decided the best thing to do for date night was to make dinner, have a drink, and play Settlers of Catan. Pete was spending all his time working, and when he wasn't working, he was sleeping. Life was off-kilter. The past few date nights had consisted of putting a movie on and always ended with the two of them falling asleep on the couch. Dinner for two was the perfect idea. He felt great about it until one of the butlers, who had worked in the White House since the Carter administration, asked him what he was doing in the kitchen. "I'm getting things together to make dinner for Peter," he said. "I was thinking about roasting a chicken."

"We can have dinner sent up to your private dining room, sir." 

"No, you don't need to do that, I just want to cook for Peter like I would do if we were home in South Bend."

Supplies were sent from the Ground Floor kitchen to the Residence: a roaster, a bag of little potatoes, a bunch of asparagus, and a six pack of a locally brewed IPA. Cooking was the first thing Chasten had done that felt remotely normal since they'd arrived in Washington. He got everything ready, ignored Truman and Buddy begging for scraps, put the pan in the oven, set the table, and waited. And waited. Checked his watch a few dozen times, looked at his phone every few minutes. It was no use calling or texting if Pete was in a meeting or on a call, and he turned his phone off when he was in the Oval anyway. 

Pete didn't come in until almost eight that night. He dropped his briefcase at the door and took his tie off before saying, "I couldn't get the Prime Minister to shut up. There must be something in the water in Australia."

"Sit down," Chasten said. "Dinner's ready."

"You cooked?"

"Are you surprised?"

"I mean, you haven't since we got here."

"I thought it would be a nice change," Chasten said, trying not to sound peeved. "It is date night."

"Oh. Yeah, you're right." 

Pete opened two beers and sat down. As soon as they started eating Chasten realized he must have made some mistake. He'd prepared everything like he did at home, put everything in the same pan and roasted it in the oven until the chicken was cooked and the vegetables were soft, but the pan he used for this dinner was more shallow than the one at home, and of course the oven was different, it got hot faster and stayed hot longer. Everything was dry. All the moisture had been sucked out. It didn't taste like anything. His first effort at something normal had failed. 

Chasten looked at Pete. After five bites he'd drunk more than half of his beer. He cleared his throat. "It's very good," he said. 

Chasten had to put his fork down and get up from the table and go out to the Truman Balcony, put his hands on the railing and look out over the dark South Lawn and try not to dissolve. After a minute the door opened and closed. Chasten felt Pete next to him. Pete put his hand on Chasten's back. "Thank you for cooking," he said. "I really appreciate how thoughtful you are."

"It was terrible."

"I'm sorry I got stuck working so late." 

"So dry." 

"Next week, unless there's a real catastrophe, I'll break for dinner at six. We can cook together."

"I tried to do something nice for you, you've been working so hard - "

"And you haven't?" Chasten felt Pete running the tips of his fingers up and down the length of his spine. "You're here because you agreed to marry me and took on the responsibility of life with a public figure. You're devoting yourself to making the White House accessible and showing people that we care about them. That's not nothing."

"They gave you the nuclear codes." 

"You're the one and only normal thing in my life." 

They leaned on the railing, shoulders touching, and looked over the sprawl of Washington before them, the Monument lit up by flood lights in the distance and the silhouette of the Capitol beyond. "I'm still trying to figure out how we're supposed to carve out time for ourselves," Chasten said. "You inherited a dumpster fire. I'm fixing the image of the First Family. Our past few date nights, we fell asleep in front of the TV. I don't want to lose sight of you while we're here." 

"You won't," Pete said. He sounded as sure of it as he did when he "I'm running for president" for the first time. "We're going to have to put the work in, and it's not going to be easy, but we're not going to grow apart. I'm not going to let that happen. Tell me what you need."

"I need to be with you," Chasten said. 

They started traveling together. When Pete went overseas to meet with foreign leaders and attend the summits, Chasten went with him. When Pete was at the G7 in Cape Town, Chasten was at an orphanage for children with HIV; when Pete was with the Prime Minister of Japan, Chasten was at the oldest Buddhist temple in the world; when Pete was in Paris, bringing America back into the climate accord, Chasten was with migrants in a homeless shelter. And when Pete said he was going to New York to address the United Nations, Chasten said, "What can I do there?"

The car pulled up in front of the restaurant. Agent Bradford was stationed outside; he opened the car door and led Chasten inside, to a table in the back behind the bar. "You were great," Chasten said to Pete as he got to the table. 

"You saw the speech?"

"The last few minutes."

Pete stood up, hugged Chasten, kissed him. "I guess you know why I wanted to meet here," he said, once they sat down.

"You brought me here after you were on Colbert for the first time. It was Valentine's Day." 

"Yeah. Before we had any idea what was going to happen."

Chasten pressed the side of his shoe against Pete's ankle. "Well, _I_ knew what was going to happen. I don't know about you." 

Pete smiled. For a second the President of the United States disappeared and all Chasten could see was the young, handsome, slightly nervous mayor he was having a pint with at Fiddler's. That evening the whole world was ahead of them, and neither of them had any idea that he was sitting across a table from his husband. "So," Pete said. He picked up his menu. "How was your day?"

Over drinks, pork belly tacos, and bacon Brussels sprouts, Chasten told him about the kids, the questions, the books. "They were all great, but I think I liked the library the best," Chasten said. "None of those kids knew me, and they didn't care. All they knew was that they were getting two stories and their parents were happy."

"I think we should get library cards," Pete said. "There's a public library on K Street." 

"Bit of a production if either of us wants to check out a book."

"But if the President and First Gentleman are seen supporting libraries, more people will want to use them. And eventually we'll take our children to get library cards."

"I hope they'll accept your word instead of insisting on ID," Chasten said, but he couldn't keep himself from smiling at the thought. The adoption process was moving - slowly, but still moving. A year from that evening, if things went the way they wanted, there wouldn't be so many days like this one. 

They split dessert - a warm chocolate chip cookie that came in a little skillet - before leaving. As they walked out, people applauded them. Pete thanked them, waved at everyone, said "Thank you, Ray," to Agent Bradford as he held the door and "Thank you, Katherine," to Agent Prescott as she opened the car door. Pete called all the Secret Service agents by their first names. Just another way he made people feel appreciated. 

The theater was less than five minutes from the restaurant. "We could have walked," Chasten said. 

"No, we couldn't."

"I know. But sending the motorcade on a five minute trip is a little ridiculous."

"So much of our lives is ridiculous now."

There were plenty of shows to see, but there was none more American than _West Side Story_. They took their seats in the orchestra, among theatergoers who either pretended not to notice or took creep shots to post on social media. Chasten felt the same excitement he always did when the house lights went down. In the dark, watching Tony and Maria fall in love as the chaos of the Jets and Sharks swirled around them, Pete rested his arm over Chasten's shoulders, and Chasten leaned into him. 

After a standing ovation - for both the cast and for Pete - they slowly made their way back to the car. Pete wanted to shake hands and take pictures, but the agents hustled them out. In the car, heading east, Pete checked his phone. "By the way, I heard from Lis earlier," he said. 

"How is the mayor-elect's Chief of Staff doing?"

"She's great. Loves her job. She invited us to sit down with Corey tomorrow before we go back to Washington."

"I'd love to. We haven't seen her since the Inauguration."

"I'll ask Saralena to set it up." Pete typed something. "José wants to see us before we turn in. Didn't say why."

José and Caroline were waiting for them in the suite. "Have either of you checked Twitter recently?"

"No," Chasten said. "What's going on?"

José pulled up the tweet. "It's from Tucker Carlson - I know, don't look at me like that - and it says, 'How can so-called President Buttigieg use taxpayer money to see a Broadway show after what he did to President Trump? A disgusting misuse of his time and energy.'" 

"What I did? You mean beat him with the popular vote and the Electoral College?" Pete said. 

"The conservative media is running with this," Caroline added. "There's more. Apparently your presence negated any progress you made at the UN, and they're quoting two people who were at the show, big Trump supporters. You ruined the wife's birthday." 

"Cry me a river," Chasten said. "Peter has been working himself into exhaustion for almost a year. Is he not allowed a night off?" 

"Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and Alex Jones are already on this. The Post will have it soon."

"This is bullshit," Chasten said. "We paid for everything ourselves. Dinner, the tickets, all of it. And that couple, they bought tickets to a Broadway show full of characters that are people of color, played by actors some of whom are undoubtedly LGBTQ, and the sight of the President is enough to ruin their night?" 

"We're not going to comment," José said. "But we thought you should be aware." 

"Five bucks says they're only doing this for attention," Chasten added. 

When they were finally, blessedly alone, Pete sighed. "Do not apologize to me, Peter Paul," Chasten said. "None of that was your fault. You don't need to be sorry for existing. I had a great time and a full house applauded you. In fact, my whole day was perfect. Nothing anyone says about you can change that."

"I feel like we've had this conversation before," Pete said. He was smiling again.

"Like the time Trump called you a nasty little man after the first debate," Chasten said. Pete had wiped the floor with Trump, causing the then-president to tweet furiously into the small hours. "The one remaining filter in his head kept him from saying the word he was really thinking." 

"True," Pete said. "But. Trump isn't president anymore, and I am, and these people are working themselves into a lather over something that no one will remember two days from now." 

"See? Let them spin out." Chasten sat down on the bed. 

"Perfect, huh?" Pete sat down next to him. 

"Sure." Chasten started ticking off on his fingers. "The helicopter ride. I hung out with kids all day. I went to a beautiful library. My husband kicked ass at the UN. We had dinner and saw an amazing show. And now we're alone in the Executive Suite at the Lotte Palace Hotel. I can't think of anything that could have made my day better." 

"That was a good show. I didn't think the sparse staging would work but it came across beautifully." 

"I'm turning my phone off. Tell whoever's on deck that we're going to bed."

Despite the constant noise of New York City right outside, Chasten slept deeply, undisturbed by the outside world. He checked Twitter over breakfast and took no small pleasure in telling everyone that Tucker Carlson was once again a laughingstock, fully ratiod on Twitter and thoroughly debunked on the morning news shows. Absurdity was a lot more common these days. He had the pleasure of telling Lis, who laughed so hard she had to sit down. 

"So, New York was a success," Pete said, as they were leaving the Johnson campaign headquarters on the East Side. "We probably won't be back for a while."

"It's a nice place, but I wouldn't want to live here. We've got a great house to ourselves."

Agent Wakefield opened the car door. "Thank you, Sam," Pete said. Wakefield closed the door. "What's next?" 

"Christmas prep is kicking into high gear. The tree for the Blue Room is arriving on Tuesday. There's going to be two hundred volunteers to decorate."

"When are we lighting the tree on the lawn?" 

"December 2nd. Carolers, reindeer, the Marine Band, I went all out."

"You know they're going to make us pay for that."

"I'm making the White House friendly again," Chasten said. "You can't put a price tag on that."

"I guess not," Pete replied. "You're doing a great job, too." 

"Who knew you can get people on your side by being kind and welcoming?" Chasten looked out the window, saw the street sign, remembered something from the night before. "Tell the driver to pull over up here." 

Even for a picture with the LOVE sculpture there had to be Secret Service surrounding them. Ali ran up from a car in the back of the motorcade to take the picture, of Pete on one side and Chasten on the other. "I unironically love New York," Chasten said. "Wait. That's a terrible caption. We'll figure it out on the plane." 

"What about just 'We love New York' and you tag me?" Pete asked. 

The agents were getting antsy about the President being out in the open. "That's good," Chasten said. "Okay, let's go."

In the car, Pete had to take a phone call from the Vice President about the infrastructure bill, so Chasten tuned him out and watched Manhattan pass by. When they got back to Washington they would have to jump right back into work. This trip was a nice respite from the grind. Without looking away he moved his hand out of his lap to slide across the leather seat to reach for Pete. A second later he felt Pete take his hand, intertwining their fingers. Air Force One was waiting across the river in New Jersey. They had a little more time for this.

**Author's Note:**

> For more information on the inner workings of the White House, check out _The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House_ by Kate Anderson Brower. Available at your local library!


End file.
